A T-post is a very common type of fence post in the United States. T-posts are typically made of steel and are sometimes manufactured from discarded railroad tracks. FIG. 1 shows a front perspective view of a conventional T-post 100. When viewed from an end, the T-post 100 describes an obvious T shape. Along a spine 110 of the T-post 100, there are series of equally spaced lugs 120 (i.e., nubs) that project outward from the spine 110.
T-posts may be used to support various types of wire (non-electrified or electrified), wire mesh, and rail fencing. When erecting such fencing, the T-posts are ordinarily driven into the ground with a manual or pneumatic post pounder. Flat plates attached near the bottoms of the T-posts are buried with the posts and help in keeping them upright. To address stress, bracing is frequently added to those T-posts that lie at the terminus of a fence, support a gate, or form a fence corner. Such bracing often includes tying one T-post to an adjacent T-post by one or more horizontal and/or diagonal support members.
When erecting non-electrified wire fences, the wire will most often simply be wrapped around the lugs of the T-posts so that the wire cannot slide up or down the post. However, while the lugs of the T-posts alone may be adequate for supporting non-electrified wire, some form of separate attachment means (i.e., bracket) is usually required to attach bracing to a T-post or when erecting a T-post fence with electrified wire or fence rails. Many solutions have been directed at providing brackets for use on T-posts. Three such solutions are described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,550 to Wickham, entitled “Universal connector for T-posts and the like”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,046,705 to Williams, entitled “Wedge for mounting fence post collars”; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,460,344 to Malloy, entitled “Fence support.” However, these particular solutions, as well as the others, each suffer from one or more disadvantages, namely, difficulty of installation, inability to adapt to more than one application, complexity of manufacture, high cost, and poor attachment strength.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for new T-post bracket attachment systems that do not display these various disadvantages.